February 18, 2008

Moral Agency Sitting at the Top of the Empire

Do you know how if you were born poor in 19th century London, or 21st
century Mississippi, you were (or are) fucked? A victim of
circumstance, with very nearly not a damn thing you can do to change
your role in history: fucked poor victim. That's the position that
reasonably affluent professional Americans find themselves in, but
instead of being fucked poor victims, we're history's villains. You
can't sit at the top of the empire, particularly an empire that fucks
over millions of its own citizens, and not be a villain. I'm sorry,
those are the breaks. You can pull a Paul Farmer, but there aren't many
Paul Farmers. That's why things that are well-intentioned, like
recycling, are absurd, because nobody cares if you spit shine the
bullet before you put it in someone's head. And that's why innocuous
things like Netflix are on the list, because they mark you as belonging
to the group. So, whiteys, (and that includes the Cosbys, for fuck's
sake) at least take a step back and realize that while you can be
decent to those around you, there's no way for you to be a good person
in any broader sense: the things we've let (and continue to let) happen
are more than enough to damn us all to hell.

What struck me most was the sock puppet's explanation of the necessity
for the creation of internal controls like anxiety, fear, and guilt in
the modern white collar worker to take the place of brute force
oppression in the regular factory worker. In a democracy we can see
this issue being played out in this election with people encouraged to
imagine themselves "freely choosing" among a variety of competing
candidates offering them a smorgasbrod of policy choices. But are they
really "freely choosing?" when the candiates and the issues and the
coverage have been constrained and limited by authorities and powers
beyond the control, or even the ken, of the individual voter? ... [T]he battle between Obama
and HRC is, in reality, largely a battle over minute and even trivial
differences in the delivery of the same product (she calls it the
"narcissism of small differences"). And even where there are actual
policy differences for voters to choose among they are encouraged or
deluded into regarding the political/policy battle as being one of
taste. Even worse, they are misled entirely as to the nature of the
choices before them--see e.g. Kristof's skin crawlingly meretricious but utterly standard paen to McCain's honesty in today's Times.

So there you go, folks: You may as well act as evilly as you care to, because it doesn't matter what you do. Isn't that the moral of this story?

Yes and no. I think this kind of thing can be turned into self-critique that is healthy for society, sort of an antidote to self-congratulation when your side (whichever side that is) wins. "Yeah! Now things will change." Really? Actually, positive change comes very slowly for the great majority of people who don't have the benefits of being first-class citizens in the richest society in human history.

On the other hand, it can also slide into wankery that justifies disengagement with the political process or Naderism: "Dude, why vote? They're all the same evil fuckers." Aka the perfect is the enemy of the good.

"Actually, positive change comes very slowly for the great majority of people who don't have the benefits of being first-class citizens in the richest society in human history."

Again, yes and no. I think gradualism/incrementalism are the rule in most things but they are historically punctuated by periods of astounding, very rapid, change. China has undergone more real growth that affected standards of living in basically the last 20 years than in the last 1000.